


It Hurts to Become

by valamerys



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: (along the lines of 'growing wings is some fucked up shit'), F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nessian - Freeform, mild body horror, post acomf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-11 21:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7908094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valamerys/pseuds/valamerys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You are not a monster, Nesta Archeron,” Cassian says, moving to stand behind her. He makes eye contact with her in the mirror, as though he can communicate the depth of his conviction with gaze alone. “You’re incredible. You were incredible when you were human, and you're incredible as an Illyrian, and you’d be incredible if the cauldron turned you into a damned suriel.”</p><p>Against her will, this pulls a half-smile out of her. “I’d still be prettier than you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's been done before, but I literally could not resist a Nesta-is-Illyrian fic. I love Nesta so much, what a terrible child.

_ I said to the the sun _

_ “Tell me about the big bang” _

_ The sun said _

_ “it hurts to become” _

\- Andrea Gibson, I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power is Out

 

I.

Nesta does not have pointed ears.

It takes her weeks to notice it. The aftermath of Hybern’s castle was a horrifying blur of blood and terror and the light being too bright, much too bright, all the time; she stumbled everywhere on too-long limbs, winced at every sound, too rich and magnified, as she caught Elain’s face in her hands and wept, smoothed her hair, refused to let anyone else near them.

Elain was as pale and silent as a statue for days. Nesta worked herself into tears trying to get her to eat at first, Elain blanching at every little thing. She wondered how much of it was the fault of the man with red hair— _You’re my mate,_ he’d said, like he could just _claim_ Elain like that. She swore dozens of times over, every time Elain looked listless, she’d kill him, as soon as she finished dismantling the king, and every person who’d ever obeyed him, one agonizing piece of flesh at a time. Nesta had always been angry, vindictive, confrontational, but this was something else, a fury so deep it was too big to be contained in her skin. If things like vases, and windows, and fine china started cracking unprovoked in her presence, well, that was what happened when you forced someone into a skin they didn’t want. _Bill the king of Hybern for it_ , she snarled at Rhys after a glass chandelier shattered with a surge in her mood, not caring that he was undeserving of her vitriol. The whole world deserved it.

So it is not until two weeks into their stay—Elain is no better, but there is less and less to be gained by hovering over her every moment—that she stills, just for a moment, and looks in the long mirror in her room. Until now, she has been avoiding it. She does not want to see the long limbs she is still not accustomed to, or the face that isn’t hers, prettier and smoother and wrong. It does not wear expressions correctly, Nesta thinks with a shiver; it falls too still if she is not actively fighting against it.

She tucks her hair behind her ears, and realizes only then, slowly, that they are not pointed, like Elain’s or Feyre’s, whose she has spent so much time looking at and recoiling from. But it is an unsettled kind of relief as she runs a finger across the rounded edge—why aren’t they?

 

II.

The night court is at war. Rhys and his friends—although that is not the right word for them now, now they are his army—winnow in and out feverishly, making plans in hushed, hard voices, conferring about _war camps_ and _extra wards on the city_ and _no, the priestess in the winter court is being unreasonable_ —

Nesta does not care.

She knows, there is no pretending otherwise, that she will eventually join them, that she will learn to fight and to disappear and to make something useful out of this body that she hates, and she will tear holes in the world for what it has done to her and Elain. Every bone in her body wants it, like a starving wolf who has scented blood.

But there is something else in her that comes first, a hot, all-encompassing rush of petulance and selfishness and mourning that wants to scream _fuck you_ to this entire war and everyone involved in it, indiscriminately. Perhaps it is childish, perhaps she is wasting time, but Nesta indulges it all the same—she locks herself and Elain away from everything, in the rooms Rhys has given them in the House of Air. When the self-pity burns itself out, and it will, she’ll come out, and ask these monsters her sister has made friends of to teach her. But until then, she doesn’t owe anyone anything.

If she is excluding herself by choice, Cassian is excluded by circumstance. 

Cassian will not lose his wings, Mor tells her, but they are not pretty. It took three healers and days of nonstop effort to have them resembling wings again, and Nesta doesn’t think she’ll ever forget the sounds of Cassian’s cries that rang through the House as they sewed tissue rife with nerve endings back together like a quilt. It’s left him weak, as all his powers go towards knitting himself back together, and he won’t be able to fly for months. Rhys insisting on his resting has kept him well out of any of the dangerous proceedings—or any proceedings at all, to hear Mor tell it.

“He’s relieved to keep his wings, of course,” She says, twisting her necklace in her hands, “but it’s been… hard.” Nesta wants to scream at that— _this is hard too_ —but she is trying to, grudgingly, befriend Mor, so she just nods. “It might help if you visited him,” She says, a touch of slyness to her voice that says she knows exactly how Nesta might help him. But if the entire war can wait for Nesta, so can Cassian. She does not visit him, has not seen him at all since that first day they all winnowed back together in a puddle of blood, and when she happens upon him in the library a week later, she curses herself for feeling unprepared for it.

She stills when she sees him, sitting at the table with a book of military strategy, wings bandaged to all hell. He catches the move just before she recovers, and she adds extra venom to her greeting to compensate. “Looks like they managed to stitch you at least halfway back together.” She emphatically takes a seat at the opposite end of the table—she won’t back off just because he’s wounded—dropping her armful of books onto it (fae myths and history. She wants to know, at least, what she’s become).

He looks up from his book with a condescending smile. “Looks like the cauldron didn’t make you any more palatable.”

“Why Cassian,” Nesta coos, “were you thinking about eating me?”

He gestures broadly at the table in front of him. “If you’re offering, hop on up.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“I think you meant ‘ _horribly handsome, please take me now, Cassian_ ,”

He is smirking at her, but after all that has happened, there is a tremor to it, some conviction lost. Nesta’s combativeness refocuses immediately from Cassian in general to _it_ —this trauma that has made him less than what he was when he made that promise to her. Some unexpected possessiveness takes hold of her, like she wants to take him back from the shadows in his eyes and the bandages on his wings.

So she says the first words she can think of that will galvanize him to action. “How about you teach me to fight instead?”

 

III.

Nesta’s back is sore. All of her is sore, though, so that isn’t surprising. Cassian is a relentless teacher—perhaps more than he otherwise would be, she thinks, suspecting he is channelling his frustration at being left behind into drilling her again and again, _faster this time_. But she is doing nothing if not the same thing; it’s Hybern’s repulsive face she sees with every punch, how it’s going to feel to rip his throat out forefront in her mind.

The tension between her and Cassian is a different beast than before Hybern. They still snap and insult, he still flirts and she repeatedly threatens to knee him in the balls again, but their angst is directed outward, at their circumstances, and not at each other. There is an unspoken camaraderie to it.

At the end of each session, Cassian lingers oddly, as though waiting for an opportunity to say something—but he never does.

 

IV.

The rest of her adapts, almost alarmingly quickly, but Nesta’s back _aches_. She fights to keep from wincing when certain moves Cas is teaching her force her to twist a certain way, but he watches her face with a closeness that suggest he senses something wrong anyway. She throws extra force behind her punches, and he says nothing.

One morning, she peels off her nightgown and twists to look over her shoulder in the mirror, stomach gripped with something a little like fear. This body is strange enough without whatever is happening to it now: her back seems swollen, either side of her spine raised in a smooth lump that feels horribly inflamed, as she presses it at it with her fingers and grimaces. She sucks a breath in through her teeth and dresses in something drapey that will hide it, and tells Cassian she won’t be having lessons today. Nesta doesn’t doubt that Cassian could have one summoned to the House of Air, but some stubbornness keeps her from asking, or saying anything at all to him, before she descends to Velaris to see a healer. The woman seems at a loss when she reveals her back; she uses magic for driving out of infection and for reduction of swelling, but tells Nesta her abilities sense nothing wrong, despite obvious evidence otherwise. Nesta’s hair is styled to hide her ears, and she chooses not to bring them up, not to disclose that she is anything other than an average citizen of Velaris. Perhaps this is a mistake, but she is grasping so desperately for anything resembling control over the situation that it is some small comfort to this to her chest.

She sends a note to Cassian informing him that her training is postponed indefinitely. 

Day by day, it grows worse, so that she cannot lie on her back at all without shooting pains. She scarcely leaves her room, wearing only backless tops, and sometimes loose capes over them when she goes to see Elain. Cerridwen and Nuala bring her food. They are vaguely sympathetic, but of no help.

“Perhaps,” Nuala says slowly, in her paper-thin voice, “The High Lord would know—“

“Rhysand is busy,” Nesta says bitterly. She hasn’t seen her sister’s mate in weeks, and even so hates the thought of having to ask him for help with something that seems so silly, so inconsequential in compared to the war he is fighting. Even if her throat nearly closes when she lets herself think about how terrified she is.

Cerridwen gives pause before saying, “Then perhaps Lord Cassian—“

Nesta’s answering snarl—and a lamp that breaks across the room— is enough to shut down that line of thought and usher them from the room with haste.

Either the two snitched, or Cassian has impeccable sense of timing, because not an hour later he is knocking on her door. “Nesta, are you in there?” She doesn’t answer him. “Nesta, I know you’re there. If you don’t want to train, that’s fine, but please come talk to me.”

There is a long pause, and she holds her breath and prays that he has gone away.

“Nesta, I swear I will stand out here all night and narrate every stupid thing I’ve ever done until you can’t resist coming out here and insulting me for it.”

She curses under her breath, puts on a cape, and throws open the door just as he is starting to speak again. “What. Is it. Cassian.” She says flatly. The wing bandages are gone, she notes, and with them, a patchwork of thick scars are revealed, along with some still-ragged spots near the bottoms of them. She holds back a cringe.

“I thought I’d ask _you_ that,” He says softly. His eyes flicker up and down her body, but not lasciviously—more like he is checking her for injury. Somehow, that is worse. She clutches at the sides of the cape.

“I don’t want to train any more. That’s all,” She grits out. “Unless Rhysand _orders_ me to, and I would like to see him try, I will not require your tutelage for the foreseeable future.” She tries to slam the door on him, but he wedges his foot in, forcing a gap to remain as she glares at him.

“Nesta,” his voice is low and serious, imploring her. “ _Please_. Whatever it is that’s wrong, whatever you’re going through, you can tell me. I know that I—“ he breaks off, throat moving like he wants to speak, but doesn’t know how. Nesta opens the door a little wider as he shakes his head, just a fraction. “You’re not alone anymore, Nesta. Please, let me in. Let me help you.”

Nesta opens the door fully, and takes a half-step towards him. “Do you really want to know what’s wrong?”

“Yes, Nesta. Of course.”

“What’s wrong,” She says faux-gently, drawing near until she is close enough to kiss him, “Is that I hate this place, and I hate this body, and I hate this war, and I hate _you_.” Venom is dripping from her mouth, carved into a vicious snarl, and she sees hurt cross his face with satisfaction.

It is not just hurt, though, there is a tenseness there, a disappointment—he knows it is a lie, or at least, that there is something she’s not telling him. That doesn’t surprise Nesta; he has always seen right through her. But a defense mechanism doesn’t have to be invisible, it just has to be effective, and this one is.

“I’m sorry I bothered you, then.” He searches her eyes one last time, and turns to leave her. She watches him walk away, too-sharp eyes catching on every detail of him, and is hit with a realization that makes her heart lurch like a spooked horse, back throbbing painfully in answer.

Cassian’s ears are not pointed either. 

She looks at the black, leathery wings that bloom from his upper back and has to clamp a hand across her mouth to keep from screaming.

The Cauldron did not make her high Fae. It made her Illyrian. And she is growing her wings.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**V.**

Her back has gotten worse. Much worse. The lumps have grown larger and uneven, reaching from her shoulders to her waist, rippling with alien tendons and muscles that develop inside her like some horrible parasite. The skin has begun to blister over them, itchy and oozing and so sensitive even the air on them feels like too much.

She has stopped visiting Elain—the pain is too great to conceal, and she can’t let her sister see her like this, wretched and trembling and gritting her teeth to keep from crying out. She doesn’t want _anyone_ to see her like this. But she hasn’t left her room since she returned from the healer three weeks ago, and that as much as the pain is starting to drive her out of her mind.

So in the dead of night, Nesta slips the bolt on her door and steps into the open-air hallways, breathing in the cool darkness like a drowning woman gasping for air. She does not hide her back; even the lightest fabric irritates it horribly, so she lets the moonlight kiss the sores as she stands looking out over one of the many exquisite balconies the house of air offers. Velaris glimmers below her, looking almost like an extension of the starry sky above them.

For a single moment, the rage and the bitterness and the fear in her subside, calmed by a lullabye the night air sings to her, and the swath of space between her and all that lies below is so vast and so beautiful that she feels a tug low in her gut—out, away, towards it, to the air. Nesta stops breathing, and slowly, gradually, allows herself to wonder: what it would be like to fl—

“…Nesta?”

The moment shatters in her hands, and she whirls furiously to Cassian, wrapping her arms around herself as though she can protect herself, prevent him from seeing what he has surely already seen. Her back throbs with fresh pain, as though it too is angered by his presence.

“Go. Away,” She snarls at him, an animal cornered. She should never have left her room.

“I—“ He visibly falters. “Nesta, your back—“  
  
“What about it?” She spits, daring him.

“You need a healer,” he says, more sure, taking a step toward her.

Nesta wants to pull away from him, but there is nowhere to go. She is trapped against the balcony railing, and running past him would just allow him another opportunity to see the wounds. The wings.

“I’ve seen a healer. There’s nothing wrong with me,” She says coldly. “Leave me _alone_.”

“Wh—“ She sees confusion, indecision flash across his face. And as he searches for words, it is washed away by understanding. His mouth falls open and his eyes flicker between her lips, her rounded ears, her arms still clasped around herself, her steely gaze. “Oh, _Nesta_ ,” He breathes, like the whole world is contained in her name, and it’s so full of compassion and Nesta _hates_ it, hates _him_ in that moment, wants to take the horror and the pity he’s feeling for her and burn them.

He takes another step towards her, and another, but she’s frozen with that feeling, the hate and fear of it all, and when he gets so close she can’t stand it she looks away. Eyes locked far to the left, she refuses to meet his gaze. She doesn’t realize she’s shaking slightly until he puts a gentle hand on her arm.

“Nesta, look at me.” She doesn’t. “Please?” He says, more softly. A long moment passes, and slowly, slowly, she meets his gaze. He swallows, and gently, like he’s soothing a wounded animal, uses one hand to cup her jaw, running a thumb across her cheekbone. “Listen to me,” he says softly, gazing into her dark eyes, “It’s going to be alright. I promise.”

Nesta’s dark gaze goes flat and cold as she takes a step back, pushing his hand away. “It’s going to be alright?” She asks, lip curling back, fury in her voice. “What is _alright_ about this?” Her shaking intensifies, and she takes a step towards him now, arms gesturing widely. “What on this miserable continent is _alright_ about the fact Elain and I tried to help you, and what do we get for it?”

“Nes—“

“We get ripped from our beds in the dead of night by animals who frightened and humiliated and _killed us_.” She is almost yelling, trembling with the force of her words, the sheer rage that is blooming in her voice. Something deep below them cracks, but it is ignored. “They _killed us_ , Cassian. I _died_ in that cauldron and something else came out,” She is crying, voice thick and cracking and hot tears just starting to spill from her eyes. “And my face is wrong and my skin is wrong and Elain—Elain, who loves a man she will never see again, who has lost a life and a future, not that any of you _care_ about that—Elain will barely speak to me. And neither of us will ever see our father or our home again.” Nesta can barely breathe for the sobs that wrack her chest now, the dam broken as everything she is mourning pours out of her. For all that she has spent time alone in her head this past week, she has not allowed herself to think any of this in so many words, and it _hurts_ , hurts like fire in her throat, hurts like the festering twin wounds that are her back.

“And if that’s not enough, if it’s not enough to be torn from my life and drowned in a fucking magic cauldron, there’s—“ She breaks, face crumpling. Cassian, face frozen in pure pain, moves toward her, holding up a hand like he might take her arm, but she recovers before he can do anything. “This _body_ ,” She says _body_ like it’s a filthy word, something beneath her, “Is becoming… _something_ , something else, and I don’t… I don’t want…” She’s losing her words, chest heaving irregularly with the effort to not completely collapse. “It _hurts_ ,” she gets out before letting out a full sob, folding in on herself.

Cassian is there instantly, taking her arms, smoothing her hair. “Nesta,” He says softly; part of her still wants to push him away, snap walls back up between them, bring them back to that place that’s so comfortable where she is angry and cold and he is snide and flirtatious, but she can’t. She is terrified, and in pain, and it is taking all of her will not to crumble in his arms. “Nesta, I’m so, so sorry,” he murmurs, and there is something almost as broken in his voice as there is in hers. “I should have—“ It’s his voice that cracks now, on all the possibilities lost to them. “I promised to protect you,” He says shakily. “And I didn’t. Nesta, I’m so sorry.”

She is shaking her head, beyond words. He is almost embracing her—overly careful of her back—but he has one hand on the back of her head, pulling her into his shoulder, and one hand on her upper arm, stroking it comfortingly. Nesta rests her head in the crook of his neck, trying to steady herself as she trembles, the tears still coming.

“There was nothing you could have done,” it’s barely above a whisper, muffled by her face in his shirt.

He pulls back, one hand under her chin, tilting her face up to meet his gaze. “Nesta, I failed you, and I swear on the Mother that if you let me, I will spend every fucking second making it up to you.”

Nesta feels as though they are on a precipice of something, and she is too tired to figure out what.

“Alright.”

He takes her hand, draws it towards his mouth, and kisses the back of it, with such reverence it sends chills through her. She does not fight him, or even speak, as he leads her away from the balcony.

Behind them, the marble floor has cracked in two.

 

**VI.**

He leaves her in her room and goes to fetch a healer. “It could be infected,” he says in response to her protests. “And they might be able to help with the pain.”

She sits at her vanity, head resting on her arms, feeling completely empty and almost blissfully thought-free until he returns. There is some shame she is keeping at bay, some weakness in herself that she wants to despise for breaking down like that, for letting Cassian think he can help her when she doesn’t need it—

But she pushes it aside, shoves it down until there is nothing but that cooling night air and the feeling of rawness that comes from tears.

They are both right about the healer—Nesta hears, through the door, the tail end of Cassian’s explanation of her situation, and the healer takes one look at her grotesque back and confirms that there is little he can do. “It is unusual, certainly,” the man says, somewhat nervously. “But it seems to be proceeding… correctly, and there is no cure for a natural process but for it to run its course.” But he does produce a salve that will prevent infection and numb the blisters, and gives recommendations for herbal pain remedies—all plants Nesta has never heard of. Stupid faerie medicine. As Cassian summons Nuala to the door and rattles off a list of ingredients for her to fetch, the healer bends close to Nesta, and speaks quietly.

“Once they’ve erupted, if this is something you don’t want…” A nervous glance at Cassian. “We can always remove them.”

Nesta is not certain what she ought to feel about that. She feels numb, as though nothing is reaching her, and gives the man a nod of acknowledgment. Cassian returns from the door, and if he has overheard, he gives no indication of it.

When the healer is gone, it feels like no larger concession than what has already passed that night to let Cassian apply the salve to her ravaged back, since she can’t reach.

Nesta sits backwards in the vanity chair, glaring at herself balefully in the mirror as Cassian’s fingers—cold against the fever-hot of the wounds— gently smooth the skin with the balm. She grits her teeth against the pain, although the numbing tingles the medicine sends through her are such a relief she could weep.

“Mine still hurt too, if it’s any comfort.” He says finally, breaking the silence between them.

“It’s not,” Nesta says through her teeth. “One of us ought to be whole.”

“We’re both whole, Nesta.”

“I’m a whole monster, then.”

The statement drops with a thunk, like a rock into a stream. His fingers slow against her back.

“You are _not_ a monster, Nesta Archeron,” Cassian says, moving to stand behind her. He makes eye contact with her in the mirror, as though he can communicate the depth of his conviction with gaze alone. “You’re incredible. You were incredible when you were human, and you’re incredible as an Illyrian, and you’d be incredible if the cauldron turned you into a damned suriel.”

Against her will, this pulls a half-smile out of her. “I’d still be prettier than you.”

Cassian gives her a crooked grin before resuming his minstrations. He speaks to her steadily, softly, not requiring any answer—he is distracting her from the pain, she realizes belatedly—and he tells her about Illyrians. Their customs and mythology, what it would have been like if she’d been born, not made, the structure of the camps, their brutality and beauty both.

What it’s like to fly.

His voice fills with such reverence when he speaks of the sky, and the wind beneath him, that for the first time since coming here, Nesta’s self-absorption breaks like a wave, and she gets a glimpse of what his wings mean to him—and what _losing_ them would have meant. She regrets, suddenly, not visiting him when he was healing, regrets that she cannot retroactively do for him what he is doing for her now.

Before he gets up, he presses a kiss to her spine, just in between her shoulder blades, where it doesn’t hurt. “I’ll be back in the morning,” He says as he stands, although Nesta is certain she can already see the rosy suggestion of dawn in the sky beyond the window. “If you need anything before then,” He smiles, “You know where to find me.”

Even after the shattering of tonight, even with the feeling of his fingers tingling on her back, her pride is too great to say _thank you_. It sticks in her throat as she watches him open the door. She sees him hesitate, loiter in the doorway.

“What is it?” She says, not unkindly. His eyes search hers, something wistful in the motion, and he waits a moment to speak.

“They’re gonna be beautiful, Nesta. Your wings.”

He shuts the door before she can respond.

 

**VII.**

Nesta would never in a dozen centuries admit it—and she’ll have a dozen centuries not to, she thinks—but Cassian’s interference makes the whole thing bearable. He wipes away the terrifying isolation of her condition in one swift evening, and even as they remain on a strange, uneven ground somewhere between their usual harsh banter and a tenderness Nesta is somewhat afraid of, it is relief that she feels, overwhelmingly.

True to his word, he returns the next day, with an armful of herbs and a dozen ideas on how to use them. He reapplies the salve, and together they use a pestle to ground different types of leaf into something they can put in her tea. Eventually, it seems that chewing blueroot is the most effective pain reliever, although it makes Nesta sleepy and a touch dizzy. Days pass with her on her stomach in bed, chewing, and Cassian appoints himself her doctor and entertainer both, keeping an eye on the growing lumps and reading poetry to her to pass the time, broken only by occasional scathing commentary when Nesta can rouse herself from her drugged haze. Cassian falls asleep periodically in the chaise, often while telling Nesta stories of wars past, and the painkillers likewise drag her into unwilling naps, as they sleep apart but together in strange symbiosis.

Nesta can feel changing within the lumps—her wings, she corrects herself quietly. The skin has begun to peel, and it is unquestionably revolting, but Nesta does not mind it as much as she otherwise might as Cassian gently pulls strips of dead tissue from her back, whispering _Nesta, you’re doing wonderfully, it’s almost over, you’ve been so brave, just a little longer_ when she can’t help but cry out. There is something inside that wants to get out, some muscle she doesn’t understand that feels cramped now, and as much as she hates this, there is some dark, primal thing pulling at her now that she is helpless to resist, that gets closer with every piece of skin to fall.

“Cassian?” She says weakly after one of these sessions, on her stomach, his name muffled by the pillow her head rests on.

“Yes, Nesta?”

She huffs gently. Apologies to not come naturally to her. “I’m sorry I said that I hate you. I don’t.”

A long enough pause passes that Nesta thinks he’s not going to answer at all.

“I know,” He says. She can’t see him, but there is a smile in his voice.

 

**VIII.**

It has been a week since Cassian summoned the healer, and as she looks in the mirror, she _sees_ for the first time that they are wings, would know now what they are without the reference of the other Illyrians. They are small and folded up tight, half-covered with molting skin, but the itch in her knows that today is the day.

She sits as she did for the salve, backwards on a chair, holding onto the backrest like a handle, looking herself, and Cassian behind her, dead on in the mirror.

“Are you sure?” He asks again.

“Yes, idiot. If you don’t want to do it, I’ll get Mor.”

“Something tells me Mor would be even less inclined than I am to literally dig your wings out of your back.”

She sighs sharply. “They’re ready, Cas. I want this over with. _Please_.”

Cassian would deny a Nesta using “please” nothing, so as she chomps on blueroot with even-keeled intensity, he, with as much gentleness as possible, tugs and pulls and tears and sometimes cuts at the remaining membrane covering Nesta’s wings. His hands quickly grow disgusting, wet and sticky with blister fluid and blood and whatever watery substance has been incubating them. Only a few whimpers slip through Nesta’s razor focus, and only one new crack appears in the ceiling when a particularly sensitive piece of skin is torn.

Cassian looks up at it with joking worry. “If I do this wrong, I could bring the whole house down. How upset do you think Rhys would be if he came home to an empty mountainside?”

“Less talking, more digging,” Nesta grinds out at him.

The whole thing takes less than fifteen minutes, all told, and resembles birth to a disturbing degree. Nesta’s eyes snap wide open as she feels the last membrane leave her left wing, and an alien instinct guides her to stretch a muscle that didn’t exist just a few months ago. In the mirror, she sees a tiny, perfectly-formed, blood-covered wing rise up above her shoulder, and it feels satisfying in the rawest way, like stretching after a long sleep. Cassian’s face, exuberant, is just beyond it, and the smile is infectious. Nesta allows herself a cautious grin, and flexes the wing— _her wing_ — as Cassian makes to free its twin. It breaks free and Nesta actually laughs; the strange power in it, even as the ruined skin of her back hangs bleeding, feels like the answer to a question she never knew she was asking.

It doesn’t _not_ feel monstrous, though; there is a strangeness to it so deep she does not think will go away any time sooner than years. She thinks of the healer’s offer as she stands to examine them in the mirror more closely.

Cassian looks thrilled, but he also hasn’t stopped laughing since the second wing came out, and it has certainly moved beyond a laugh of joy.

“ _What_ is so funny?” Nesta demands finally, although there is still a stupid grin on her face too.

“Nesta,” He wheezes, holding his stomach, “They’re _so small.”_ Nesta, for an Illyrian, is comically disproportionate: she has a child’s wings, certainly not large enough for flight yet.

And just like that, Nesta feels something slide into place. For the first time since leaving her home, she feels like her body is _hers_ , wings and all, and she feels the urge to defend it, even against something as ridiculous as Cassian’s giggles.

Her gaze narrows into a glare. “Don’t you dare laugh; when they grow in they’ll be bigger than yours.”

Cassian looks like the sun has come out, and takes Nesta’s face in-between his bloody hands and kisses her fiercely, and Nesta kisses him back, feeling her wings fan out behind her, and grinning, _grinning_ through the gore into the feel of his lips on hers and the rush of the blood in her Illyrian veins.

 

**IX.**

They fetch a healer (who is more than a little alarmed by the messy aftermath of their impromptu quasi-surgery) for the skin of her back, and nothing has ever been more satisfying to Nesta than being able to bathe the blood off herself afterwards, every muscle and tendon in its proper place, no swelling, no shooting pains. Her wings are hard to clean, and almost distressingly sensitive, but she likes them more with every moment, the strange power in them, the pull she feels to the sky answering in their movements.

The first thing she does is go to see Elain, bracing herself for the worst.

“Oh, Nesta,” She says, mouth falling open.

“I’m sorry I haven’t visited you,” Nesta says by way of greeting. “I’ve been… indisposed.”

Elain then does the last thing Nesta expects, which is laugh. It’s the first laugh she’s heard from Elain since the cauldron, and for that if nothing else, Nesta thinks she would keep the wings. Elan is delighted, and spends the better part of an hour examining them and asking Nesta questions, not all of which she knows the answer to, but it is nice all the same.

 

**X.**

It takes them eight months to grow to their full capacity, and in the end, Nesta is right. They get out measuring tape and determine that Nesta’s wingspan is larger than Cassian’s by two inches.

 

(this fic is also on [tumblr](http://valamerys.tumblr.com/post/149668756390/fic-it-hurts-to-become)!)


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